This is ironically totally backwards.

The 20B+ / $2B/launch SLS program "innovation" is to not innovate! This is Apollo+, but heavier and in many ways worse and very expensive.

My own guess is that all in NASA / SLS cost per launch and program maint is probably on the range of $3B per launch if you look at the facilities list they have for this - which is super large.

Even weirder, NASA now says they want to be the anchor customer for 30 years of this boondoggle! Rather than just bidding out whatever heavy lift they need, they are going to get stuck with this crap for 30 years, which is a clear lock-in effort to avoid this thing getting cancelled out.